


Silence Is Golden (I Treasure It So)

by Moosie



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Powers, M/M, More Experienced Bilbo, Mutant Powers, Telepath!Bilbo, Telepath!Thorin, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-09 06:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1971972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moosie/pseuds/Moosie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin thought he would never find peace. And then Bilbo came along and all the voices stopped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about this while at the basketball court with my cousins and Uncle. It was beginning to rain and there were children shouting.
> 
>  
> 
> **Thorin**  
>  _Bilbo_

Thorin didn’t usually leave home, but Thráin had insisted it would be good for him, though Thorin knew that wasn’t true. He didn’t know how to keep his power under control just yet, so his father’s thoughts had come through in his mind loud and clear. Thráin wanted him to leave because he thought it was about time Thorin stopped acting like a child and went out into the world. Thorin knew his father didn’t understand what it meant to have this power; Thráin didn’t understand what it felt like to have all those voices in his head.

Even now, Thorin sat with the worst headache, the voices of hundreds of people around him making his head pound in pain. There were so many, more than he was used to or comfortable with having in his mind. He was used to about twenty, and he had figured out how to throw a proverbial rug over them to muffle the noise. Now, however, there were way too many to just cover up; when he tried to muffle a few, many more showed up and made even more noise. It was beginning to become unbearable.

Thorin took a breath. He should never have left his home. He couldn’t control the voices. They were going to drive him mad, just as they had his grandfather. He felt like the door to his home had been left open and hundreds of people had flooded in, talking much too loudly and knocking things around. Some people had more than a single voice, others, barely even one. They were like an endless sea of fish, their colours and motions much too loud. He would never have peace.

_Hello, young one._

Thorin blinked suddenly. The voices were beginning to die down, one by one, being closed off from his mind. This wasn’t his doing, he knew because they were actually starting to stop, not becoming muffled. There was someone in the crowd who recognized his distress, someone like him, and they were getting rid of the voices. Soon, there was complete silence and the only thing Thorin could hear was himself. It was magnificent.

 _That’s better, isn’t it?_ The voice from before returned and Thorin looked around, trying to find who it belonged to.

 _The silence is_ wonderful _don’t you think?_

 **Who are you?** Thorin asked, **How did you block them all out?**

The silence was deafening suddenly and for a moment Thorin thought the mystery person was gone. He would later find out that the mark of his saviour disappearing was the voices returning. He would later never want to be parted from him.

_What is your name, young one?_

**Thorin. Thorin Durin.**

_What a lovely name._ The voices sounded fond and pleased with Thorin’s answer. _Alright, love. I’m going to be your teacher._

Thorin was confused. What was this mystery person going to teach him? A better question dawned on him. _How_ was this person going to teach him? And an even better question still was who the hell _was_ this person?

Two of his questions were answered when a person walked over to his table and placed an envelope down on it. The person looked to be in a trance as he stared pass Thorin, not even seeing him. He turned and, after taking a few steps away from Thorin’s table, shook his head and looked around, seeming confused. Thorin was astonished to see it happen.

_Don’t worry, we’ll cover mind control. Not yet, though._

The person had heard Thorin’s confusion then.

_If I’m going to teach you anything at all, come to the address written on the paper._

The next thing Thorin knew, the voices began to return. He shook his head, eyes going wide at the fact that the silence was being interrupted. No. No, no, no, he didn’t want the noise back! The silence had been so beautiful, so lovely, why did the noise have to return? He hated it so much, loathed the sounds of other people in his own mind. He couldn’t think with the noise.

 **Wait! Do not let them back in, I beg of you!** He pleaded. The mysterious person’s voice cut through the noise again, briefly

_Find me and the noise will end._

\------

The warehouse Thorin pulled up to was dilapidated and falling apart. But the noise was reduced to a muted muttering when he walked inside of it. There weren’t many people out here, but that didn’t seem to be the only thing. There was something about the warehouse’s walls that kept the noise to a minimum. He stood for maybe ten minutes listening to the noise before it was all just gone. No sound in his mind at all. It was deafening in its own way, but Thorin closed his eyes and savoured it.

“Thorin.”

That voice wasn’t in his head. It didn’t have the resounding echo it would have in his mind. The person was here.

Thorin whipped around and spotted a single person smiling at him. He was shorter than Thorin with perfect curls and kind blue eyes. He wore a trench coat of sorts and a hat on his head. He had a bit of a weary look about him. If it weren’t for the fact that Thorin couldn’t hear him in his head, he would have figured that the other was possibly a janitor.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man’s smile grew and he inclined his head at Thorin.

“Bilbo Baggins, at your service,” he answered.

_I have much to teach you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do intend to leave this here since I really don't need to start anymore chapter stories. It's an open ending kind of. Take it the way you will.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I lied

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied

Training started off very simple. See, Bilbo didn’t do what conventional telepaths did when it came to helping a fellow telepath, simply because telepaths usually _didn’t_ help each other. You were supposed to figure things out from a young age on your own. Bilbo had always been able to read minds, since he was a child, and he had learned every trick out there by the time he had turned twenty-five. Sure, it had taken a long time, but when Gandalf, an old friend and fellow telepath, came to him and told him that he knew all there was to know, and that soon he’d find himself facing a different challenge (teaching others!) Bilbo packed up and moved to a temporary apartment in the city.

Now, Bilbo had only taught three other telepaths how to control their power (Frodo, who was only six years of age, didn’t count because Bilbo was still teaching the lad) so he was still relatively new to the teaching thing. He didn’t go seeking people out—they found him. One had been using his powers to con people, and Bilbo had managed to get him out of that habit (though Nori still sometimes tried to read Bilbo’s mind just to find out where the cookie jar was hidden) while another had simply reached out for someone to understand him (and Bilbo had understood young Legolas; he’d understood and he’d been able to teach him).

And Frodo had simply adored Aragorn. The young boy loved when they played (literal) mind games with one another to help further Frodo’s teachings. Bilbo didn’t know how or when, but at some point Frodo had started calling him Strider (right after Aragorn had taken him to spend the day at work with him, something Bilbo thought played heavily into the matter) and was often shouting “Strider said this” or “Strider told me that” and “Strider promised me this!” Bilbo thought it was cute—most of the time (it wasn’t as cute when he was shouting it from the other room in his mind and Bilbo could hear him loud and clear).

His latest student, however…

Thorin had reached out to Bilbo completely by accident, startling him with the immense amount of power the other had. Bilbo knew many tricks, having learned quite a few from Gandalf, and was able to figure out Thorin’s reach. He was able to hear how far Thorin’s mind stretched out to find that Thorin not only felt through the shop they were in but also to the other stores on the street. It was then Bilbo knew he had found another student. From there, it hadn’t been hard to find the taller man; Thorin had the look of someone who didn’t have control in his own mind about him. Bilbo listened in and could hear hundreds, maybe even _thousands_ , of other voices in Thorin’s head. Feeling sympathetic, he had closed off Thorin’s thoughts from the world around him, smiling at the way Thorin perked up at the silence.

They spoke briefly and Bilbo scribbled a note and placed it into an envelope. He then had someone else take it to Thorin for him, a mind control trick he had learned with relative ease in his first years of training. When his alarm had beeped softly, telling him it was time to finish running his errands, he’d bid farewell to Thorin, feeling bad when he had to let all of the voices back into Thorin’s head. The other had looked so exhausted, and the way he had perked up once the noise in his mind stopped had made him look ten years younger. The training would do wonders for him, Bilbo was sure of it. For now, he had to go, and distance wasn’t something Bilbo was particularly good at.

Meeting with Thorin was another matter altogether though. Bilbo had chosen the abandoned warehouse because that was where he taught all his students (except Frodo. Drogo had adamantly told Bilbo that there would be no warehouses). The only people that were generally out this far in the warehouse district were either mafia bosses and drug dealers or the cleaning crews that came out every fifth of the month to clean up the warehouses a bit.

For the second time, Thorin perked up immediately once the silence rang out in his mind. Bilbo called his name softly, for he knew it now, and gave him a smile he hoped looked sincere despite his nervousness. Thorin looked shocked to see him, and Bilbo didn’t blame him because he looked a bit like a bum in his own opinion. The trench coat had been a gift from Prim, the hat from Gandalf. Both were well over a decade old, but he treasured the simple items.

As for training, Bilbo knew what direction he wanted to head in with Thorin to help him, which was starting off with teaching him how to lock voices out of his mind so that he could finally get a bit of peace. It wouldn’t be easy, not by a long shot, since it seemed like Thorin hadn’t been a telepath for long, and as such he didn’t understand what he could and couldn’t do. Most of the telepaths Bilbo had met had had their powers from a young age. Thorin was different.

Bilbo had always liked different.


End file.
